Reluctant Warriors (42 page)

As the gun fired, a young private darted past it. Wiley tried to shout a warning,
but it was too late. He watched, helpless, as the private ran right into the line
of fire. The blast knocked the boy down, and he was still.

It had begun to snow. Wiley stared down at the handsome boy, only a year or two younger
than himself. His face was unmarked and so peaceful!
He looks like he just went ta
sleep!
Wiley thought.

As he turned away, a bullet struck him in the left side and spun him around. He fell
on his back.

He lay there on the cold ground, stunned, not feeling any pain yet. He couldn't get
up.

For a few minutes, he was fully alert and completely aware of what went on around
him. He could see peripherally all the chaos of the battle: men running by him, one
inadvertently stepping on him, the sounds of the cannon firing and of shells hitting
nearby.

But in a few minutes, his body began to cool. He drifted into the ethereal world
of shock, no longer registering outside sensory data. He lay in suspended animation,
feeling no pain, wonderfully comfortable, each minute shaving a fraction of a degree
from his body temperature.

“Chip,” the voice came to him softly, “Chip.”

He knew it was his mother, though he could not ever remember seeing her. But he saw
her so clearly now, a plain country woman wrapped in a brown shawl.

“Mama.”

“Chip, I am here for you.”

“Mama, why did you leave me? Didn't you love me?”

“Oh, Chip, you were my own sweet baby. I never left you! I am here for you now.”

“But you left me to him, and he hurt me.”

“No, Chip, I lay close to you all that time. He killed me and buried me in the woods
close to the house. I protected you as best I could.”

“But, they said you ran off with a man. Even Grandma and Grandpa said that.”

“Yes, but that wasn't true. Your father is a very bad man. Sheriff Borders is his
half-brother, which no one knows. He only said he'd seen me with another man. But,
it wasn't true. I held you to my breast and loved you with all my heart till he killed
me.”

She faded away.

Wiley's eyes opened, just a little. His consciousness registered the cold, the pain,
and the noise around him once again, just barely. He could feel himself failing.

Something moved above him. A man looked down at him.

“A bad wound with that much blood,” someone else called. “Leave him. He's gone. How
about the guy over there?”

The man walked off.

Wiley's eyes closed again. He called out in his mind.
Mama!

She appeared again, indistinct before him.

“Mama.”

“Yes, my only love.”

“Mama, I want to go with you,” he said in his mind, but his lips did not move.

“No, my love, your time is not now. You need to awaken. There are men here who will
help you.”

She was smiling so sweetly, so peacefully. He reached toward her. “Please, take me
with you!”

“No, baby. You must do this one thing for me. You must go back and be alive again.
I must go now.”

He tried to move but could not. “Mama, I can't get up.”

“All you have to do is move and they will see you. I must go.”

She faded away. Wiley cried out in anguish in his mind! His mouth opened to let out
the cry, but there was no sound.

Crunching footsteps nearby, then a shout. “Hey, this sergeant is alive.
Medic! MEDIC!
Over here! This guy's alive!”

Wiley awoke on something warm and soft. He opened his eyes, slowly, and looked around
blearily. There was a blanket over him and rows of occupied cots stretching away
on both sides of him. On the opposite wall, there was a sign with a big red cross
on it. He was in a hospital ward, then, probably a field hospital.

There was a terrible pain in his side. He looked down at himself, noting with relief
that all his limbs were still there. Then he noticed the gleam of something metal
on his chest.

He looked closer. It was the gold bar of a second lieutenant, pinned to his gown.

The Faded Rose

. . . morning fair
Came forth with Pilgrim steps in amice gray;
Who with her radiant finger stilled the roar
Of thunder, chas'd the clouds, and laid the winds,
And grisly Specters, which the Fiend had rais'd . . .
And now the Sun with more effectual beams
Had chear'd the face of Earth . . .

—Milton,
Paradise Regained, Book 4

New York City, May 1945

T
wenty-year-old Second Lieutenant Chip Wiley stepped out of the hospital with a smile
on his face and took a deep breath of the air of New York City. He stood erect, displaying
a perfect martial bearing. His red hair blew slightly in the gusts that swept up
the street.

“Feels good,” he muttered. “Air's not as good as in the country, but I'm not gonna
complain.”

It was a wonderful relief to finally be out after more than two months lying in a
hospital bed and then two weeks more just sitting around. The nurses and staff had
been great. “But, no more hospital,” he said to himself, a smile on his face. “I
got ninety days convalescent leave. Bye-bye Army after thirty-five months.”

He walked to the paymaster's office, collected three hundred dollars, and then hailed
a cab. He was headed for Columbia, South Carolina, to see the
Gregorys. He'd met
them five years ago, when he and their son Scott had become friends during Basic
Training together there.

He was confident the money would be enough to get him there. On the way, he would
make three stops to visit with the families of some of his fallen comrades: Albany,
New York, to see “Long Shot” McMurtha's folks; Detroit, to see Mrs. Jack Dietrich;
and Calumet City, Illinois, to see Thomas Kuehl's family.

The day after McMurtha was killed, Wiley had looked amongst his things for an address.
McMurtha almost never got mail, but there had been one letter. The return address
said “1214 E. Washington, Albany, New York.” Wiley had written it down.

Now five months later and a world away, he was on a train to Albany. It was only
a two-hour ride from Grand Central Station.

He flagged down a cab at the Albany train station. The cabbie studied Wiley's uniform
as he got in. “Heading home, soldier?”

“Not exactly.” Wiley settled into the seat, feeling a twinge in his side where the
old wound was. “I'm gonna see the family of a buddy of mine, a guy who didn't make
it back.”

“I know that tune.” The cabbie's lined face looked sympathetic. “I was in the Navy
myself. Convoy duty in the north Atlantic. Just got out for good six months ago.”

They drove to what had been 1214 East Washington, only to find a large area being
cleared by a bulldozer. The operator didn't know much. “Yeah, there was some houses
here, real run-down stuff. Why, soldier? You from around here?”

Wiley had the cabbie stop by the police station next, but they knew nothing. The
phone book showed no listing for McMurtha. The former scout racked his brain but
could recall nothing his dead friend had said of any family.
I thought findin' them
would be easy, and the hard part would be facin' them
, he thought.

An hour had passed. There was $4.58 on the meter. The cabbie looked up as Wiley climbed
back in. “Any luck?”

“Nope.”

“Jeez, I'm sorry, Bud. You wanna try anywhere else?”

Wiley puzzled for a second. “No. If none of these people know anythin', probably
nobody here will. Just take me back to the station, I guess.”

Sorry, Long Shot
, he thought.

After two hours of waiting at the station, Wiley boarded a night train to Detroit.
It was a slow journey, with nine or ten stops along the way.

He watched the passengers for a long time. He was fascinated by seeing so many civilians:
men
not
in Army uniforms, women with their long hair and dresses, young children
with their parents.

It struck him that something new was happening to him wherever he went. It had happened
in Albany and now on the train. People nodded at him. Men might touch their hats
and say, “Soldier,” as they passed by. Some said “Lieutenant,” in such a nice way.
At first he didn't know what to make of it.
They can't be ttryin' ta get somethin'
from me, can they?
he thought.
Somethin' wrong with my uniform?

Then he realized: they were acknowledging him out of respect!

Can you beat that?
he thought. He smiled over it again and again.
You never can tell.

The night passed slowly. He looked out the window for a while. Outside, it was dark,
except for scatters of lights when they passed through towns. It was a little cramped
in coach, but he didn't mind the upright seat. Coach seats weren't so bad. They were
a whole lot better than sleeping against a tree with the possibility that some German
would stumble on you and shoot you.

Finally, he fell asleep.

Dietrich had had many letters from his wife. Wiley had copied their address down
as well: Pontiac, Michigan, just outside of Detroit. It was easy to find “Jack Dietrich”
in the phone book.

Over several hours the next day, he called the number repeatedly from a drugstore
just around the corner. It wasn't until 6:30 that evening that Mrs. Dietrich answered
and immediately invited him to come around.

She answered the door. Wiley was immediately taken with the nice-looking woman in
her early twenties, immaculately dressed in a dark blue suit with padded shoulders.

They sat facing each other in plain ladderback chairs in the tiny apartment. Mostly,
she looked down at the floor but occasionally lifted her head and smiled wanly at
Wiley.

“Chip, Jack wrote in detail about you and several others in your unit.”

“Mrs. Dietrich–”

“Paula,” she corrected.

“I'm sorry for what I did. I should've bandaged Jack better when I had the chance.”

She looked into the scout's eyes, so calmly and understandingly. “I know war is terrible
and you can't always do what you would under other circumstances. I'm sure you did
all you could, Chip. He always had good things to say about you.”

Dietrich's death flooded back into his mind as though it had happened the day before.

“Paula, it all happened very quickly. He got hit, and in the darkness I couldn't
see how bad the wound was. If only it had been different. It was very cold and his
only chance was with the local people, the Germans. They were really pretty good
about takin' in our wounded. I had my mission. A lot a lives were at stake.” Wiley
stiffened. “So I took him to a house and left him. I saw them pull him in.”

“Yes, I see.”

“I got wounded right after that and wound up in the hospital. I tried ta find out
about Jack. I wrote our captain, a good man named Redding.”

“Yes, Jack mentioned him too.”

“I wrote him ta check the Prisoners of War Exchange List, but he said Jack's name
was not on it.”

Wiley and the young widow sat facing one another five feet apart. But
she had no
words of blame for him. He thought he deserved blame, having left a helpless man.
But she would not oblige him. He watched her. She had lovely and expressive hands
and beautiful auburn hair carefully curled. Her back, perfectly straight, never touched
the chair. She seemed lost in her thoughts.

Then she finally spoke again, in a lower voice than before. “I am sure you did all
you could for my Jack.”

He felt obliged to keep the conversation going. He asked how long they had been married,
though he knew the details from the endless conversations he had been part of overseas.

She looked up in happy recollection. “One day, five years ago this June, he came
into the office of my father's insurance company answering our ‘Help Wanted' ad.
It's just a few blocks from here, you know. I've worked there since I was fourteen.
Jack had such a nice personality that Father was won over immediately and gave him
the job.

“We got to know each other working together. He was a fine and honest man. No one
ever said a word against him. His old customers still ask after him. We dated and
then married nineteen months later. I had my husband only twenty months, and most
of that time he was overseas.”

She paused for several seconds. Wiley sat in awkward silence.

Then she looked into his eyes so seriously. “Do you think he suffered much?” Her
voice wavered, then dropped to a whisper. Tears began to run down her face. “I must
know. You
will
tell me the truth, won't you, Chip?”

“Yes. Paula, I will. No, I don't think he suffered. It was very cold. He got numb
very quickly.”

Wiley watched as she grabbed a handkerchief off the nearby bureau and wiped the tears
away. Then she was erect in the chair again, the same sad, resigned expression returning
and remaining.

The soldier hadn't been around women very much, and he failed to understand what
was going on in her mind. Paula was a person of habit. She derived great satisfaction
from the order of her life, begun as a young girl. A year and a half of marriage
hadn't broken the regimen. Her husband had sweetened her life immeasurably but not
changed it structurally. She
still arose at the same time every morning, weekday
or weekend, put on her same makeup in the same way. Her job, apartment, clothes,
church, and where she shopped were the same and would remain so for what seemed to
all around her to be an endless time. This order was a powerful comfort for her,
and she relied upon it in this life she would not have chosen for herself. She had
always imagined having a lot of children, but perhaps she was better suited to a
lonely life. Sometimes she lost her way and wept at the loss of her husband, but
it was rare. In the quiet time, she thought of her dear, sweet Jack, and his love
sustained her. It was not that she turned her back on another loving relationship
but rather that another good man never seemed to come along.

Wiley noticed only that the woman was sad. The sadness brought a quality of beauty
and vulnerability to her. He wondered if he should hang around for a while, maybe
come back to see her on his leaves. But it was a fleeting thought. There was a dedication
in her manner that said that she was taken and would remain so. When he was ready
to leave, he made sure he had the address written down and assured her he would stay
in touch.

Wiley spent the night in a rundown hotel off Michigan Avenue. The next day, he caught
a train to Calumet City, Illinois, south of Chicago not far from the Indiana line.
Thomas Kuehl had boasted to his fellow soldiers nonstop that his hometown was “America's
number one sin city,” and Wiley saw a city that the prosperity of the war had bypassed.

Arriving at dusk, he walked from the station toward a long line of seedy hotels.
The respect he had enjoyed for his uniform and rank were absent here. People drove
by fast, occasionally cursing him. One even threw a bottle at him, though it failed
to come very close.